THE NEWSLETTER OF THE JOHN CARTER BROWN LIBRARY NUMBER 46 / SPRING 2014 JCB in LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR Although the signs of springtime have revealed them- selves only slowly this year in Providence, the JCB has been abuzz with activities these past several months, planting the seeds for future programs and keeping our research fellows and scholarly community busy with a range of exciting events at the Library. From round-table sessions on early environmental history to an extraordinary exhibition on the Haitian Revolu- tion, the reading room has hosted a remarkable array of academic and educational programming whose aim has been to reach beyond the traditional fields of the JCB’s strengths and find new audiences in Providence and beyond. In the pages of this edition of inJCB, you will get a sense of all these activities, including some of our LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR new acquisitions, and I hope you will appreciate, as I do, the remarkable curatorial and academic talents that the Library brings together under one 2013-14 Board of Governors collective roof. Frederick D. Ballou As I look back on my first six months as director and librarian, I am most Antonio Bonchristiano impressed at the number of constituencies that, happily for us, count the T. Kimball Brooker Library as their own. Local supporters from Providence have always been Sylvia Brown key to our ongoing success as a civic institution, from the days of George Paul R. S. Gebhard Parker Winship and his society events in the Library’s reading room, and Harriette Hemmasi, ex-officio I have enjoyed meeting this segment of our community at our evening read- Artemis A. W. Joukowsky ings, lectures, and seminars. We are also most fortunate to have a vibrant Gilbert C. Meister group of local researchers and fabulous residential fellows who, together R. David Parsons with our assiduous Brown faculty and student participants, make up our Christina Paxson, Chair, ex-officio ongoing academic cohort. Beyond Providence, our former fellows, members Jean René Perrette of the Associates, and generous supporters of all ranks continue to engage the Library by using our online resources, perusing our exhibitions, and Jane Gregory Rubin participating in events outside of Providence—we are deeply grateful to all David M. Rumsey of them. The JCB is a deeply loved institution and I feel fortunate to have Santiago Saavedra benefitted from the wise counsel expressed so eloquently by so many of you, Neil Safier, ex-officio always concerned that the Library continue to serve as a beacon for schol- Clinton I. Smullyan arship, connoisseurship, and—most importantly—the love of books and William H. Twaddell history, throughout the Americas and beyond. Ira L. Unschuld Over the next several months, the Library will be taking stock of its past Gordon Wood, ex-officio successes and thinking seriously about its future, and I look forward to hearing from you about how you think the Library’s activities and programs can be made even stronger in the years to come. I will keep you apprised of this process of stock-taking and assessment as we chart a new course The John Carter Brown for the Library, ever-conscious of the unique challenges and tremendous Library is an independently opportunities that our own special moment in history has presented to us. funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities founded in Neil Safier 1846 and located at Brown Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian University since 1901. Cover details from: A southwest view of the college in Providence, together with the President’s House & Gardens, [Boston?], ca. 1795. This image was drawn by David Leonard, who graduated from the university in 1792, and engraved by Samuel Hill. It was the first published view of the largest building constructed in colonial Rhode Island. Plan de la Ville du Cap François et de ses Environs Dans l’Isle St. Domingue, Paris, 1786. Engraving with hand coloring. Carte de St. Domingue ou sont marqués les paroisses jurisdictions, ca. 1770. Manuscript. II inJCB FRONT ROW SEATS TO BROWN’S 250TH CELEBRATION NEWS rown University turns 250 this year, and in addition to being ideally positioned for a great Bview of the fireworks on and over University Hall, the JCB is contributing programming and exhibitions to the fifteen-month, campus-wide semiquin- centenary celebrations. During the grand kick-off weekend, March 7 and 8, a steady stream of over 200 students, parents, alumni, and area residents visited the Library during a two-day open house, the highlight of which was a tour of The Other Revolution exhibition (see pages 2-3) with guest curator Malick Ghachem (JCB Fellow 1998-99 and Associate Professor of History, MIT). Earlier on March 7, the university hosted more than 250 local middle schoolers for “A Day of Academic Exploration.” Reference librarian Kim 1764: BROWN’S FOUNDING Nusco’s Remains of the Revolution: Documents of Haitian Independence, George IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT Washington’s signature, and more! drew enthusiastic tweens to the Library for a A lecture series in celebration of th first-hand look at one of our copies of the Declaration of Independence, Wash- Brown University’s 250 Anniversary: ington’s cash books, and key documents of the Haitian Revolution. Still to come: APRIL 22, 2014 Globalization Off to College: Higher Education in the Americas, 1551-1825, an exhibition that Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University will open in late April and run through October 2014—to include JCB materials SEPTEMBER 11, 2014 The Slave Trade that chart the founding and development of the earliest universities of the Ameri- Craig Wilder, MIT cas (Lima was first in 1551), not to mention utopian and unrealized proposals OCTOBER 21, 2014 Education and trans-Atlantic debates on curriculum and standards. In partnership with the George Marsden, University Department of History, the JCB will also play host to 1764: Brown’s Founding in a of Notre Dame Global Context, a series of seven lectures that NOVEMBER 18, 2014 Natives and Empires will bring leading aca- Colin Calloway, Dartmouth College demic voices to campus to speak about the FEBRUARY 17, 2015 Religion world at the moment of Catherine Brekus, University of Chicago Brown’s founding, fo- MARCH 3, 2015 Health and Medicine cusing on the thematic Charles Rosenberg, Harvard University areas of early modern MAY 23, 2015 Politics and Governance globalization, the Gordon Wood, Brown University slave trade, education, Details at: www.brown1764.org natives and empires, A southwest view of the college in Providence, together with the religion, health and President’s House & Gardens, [Boston?], ca. 1795. medicine, and politics and governance. Each lecture will have an accompanying mini-exhibition of related materials at the JCB. The Library has worked closely to coordinate these lectures (underwritten by the Office of Brown’s 250th Anniversary) with Linford Fisher (of the Depart- ment of History) and a number of Brown departments and institutes, including the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of Education, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, the School of Public Health, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, and the Watson Institute for International Studies. For a full schedule of 250th events, see 250.brown.edu. inJCB 1 WINTER AND SPRING 2014 THE OTHER REVOLUTION: HAITI, 1789–1804 n the ten years since the bicentennial of Haitian Inde- Ipendence, there has been an explosion of scholarship and increased appreciation of the significant role played EXHIBITIONS by the revolution in Saint-Domingue in the transforma- tion of the Atlantic World in the late eighteenth century. This newer scholarship was in evidence in the New-York Historical Society’s groundbreaking 2011-12 exhibition, Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn, to which the JCB loaned several items from the American, French, and Haitian revolutions. As a follow up, and in coordination with the N-YHS, the JCB invited guest curator Malick Ghachem to think again about his 2004 presentation of the JCB’s Haitian materials in The Haitian Revolution, 1789-1804. In his introduction to the present exhibition, he makes the case for further scholarship to recover even more of what was also the only successful slave revolt: Malick Ghachem (Associate Professor A t the start of 2014, Haiti remains marginalized on the world scene and of History, Massachusetts Institute of vulnerable within its own borders, painfully so in the aftermath of the Technology) leads a tour of The Other terrible 2010 earthquake that struck such a devastating blow to a proud Revolution: Haiti, 1789-1804 in the and resilient land. MacMillan Reading Room on March 8, 2014, as part of the kickoff weekend to E ven more so than in the American and French contexts, much of Haiti’s Brown University’s 250th Anniversary revolutionary treasure is necessarily lost forever. Few sources survive that celebrations. record the thoughts and sentiments of the tens of thousands of illiterate slaves Malick was a Center for New World who carried out the Haitian Revolution. But some of that treasure, something Comparative Studies Fellow at the of the Haitian revolutionary spirit–its stirring promise, and also its tragic JCB in 1998-99. disappointments–is still preserved in the books, pamphlets, maps, and prints Photo by Scott Kingsley displayed in this room. In many instances the revolutionary spirit can be only dimly perceived through the eye-witness accounts and recollections of literate white colonists and free people of color, but it is there all the same. In conjunction with The Other Revolution, the Library hosted its first ever artist-in-residence. Haitian-born Edouard Duval-Carrié was here for a week in February, researching in the collection and speaking with curators and scholars in residence.